


Tell Me Where It Hurts

by mothmangrub



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Asexual Connor (Detroit: Become Human), Established Relationship, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Ken Doll Anatomy, Post Game, post apocalyptic domesticity? lol
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-25
Updated: 2019-01-30
Packaged: 2019-10-15 21:24:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17536541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mothmangrub/pseuds/mothmangrub
Summary: The deviant hunter had somehow become her friend in Markus’ absence. Markus was almost untouchable now, becoming less and less the man she was starting to know, and more the icon of his people. Somebody had to. That was his sacrifice.In the meantime, Connor and North were the ones who did his dirty work. Together.OR:Five acts of intimacy and one of violence.





	1. Kiss

**Author's Note:**

> Aaaa the rarepair of my heart ;v;7 Anybody who reads this one gets special love from me haha
> 
> This fic's theme songs are:
> 
>  
> 
> [Tell Me Where It Hurts - Garbage](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6u7PgE5yDw)  
> [Like Real People Do - Hozier](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrleydRwWms)  
> [Born To Die - Lana Del Rey](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L34wcarloaA)  
> [Enjoy The Silence - Depeche Mode (Trevor Something Remix)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpCnH_My-YE)

“Can I kiss you?” he asked.

Her instinct was to laugh at him. Nobody had ever  _ asked,  _ let alone so uncoolly. Of course, in the Eden Club they just took whatever they wanted from her, and there was nothing particularly laughable about that actually. In Jericho she was safe but still people touched her easily, in brotherly camaraderie and affection, and she'd gotten used to the way her circuits sometimes sparked at that, her shoulders tensing on instinct. She'd learned to smile through it.

(Unless it was a bad day. On bad days she'd learned to be a bitch--an easy way to be left alone without having to give an explanation.)

Connor, however, never touched her because Connor never touched anyone. He walked around with walls up even higher than hers, never interfacing or sharing the deviants’ mind link if he could help it. Nobody asked why.

And yet here he was, looking at her so unreadably. Waiting for a response.

She didn't laugh, for his sake, but she did smirk a little and just... shake her head.

“Why do you want to?” she asked. Not really accusingly, just interested.

They were outside, at night, in the emptiness of a Detroit abandoned by humans for the time being. Even after the revolution, there was still so much work to be done. They were on a timetable, making sure to gather all their people together and barricade themselves into the city before the humans’ inevitable counterattack. Markus was keen on preparing for peaceful negotiations, but North still felt in a hollow place in her chest that they’d be spilling blood again soon enough. Blue or red. Your choice, Markus.

It made her appreciate more the beauty of quiet nights like this. With the humans gone, and so much of Detroit’s power cut off by the military, the light pollution of the city had dimmed enough for an unusual number of stars to show. She mapped them with every glance, her programming connecting the lines of constellations in her vision. She and Connor had developed a habit of meeting in a park late at night, after their respective duties were finished. 

They were perched on a bench in front of a fountain whose water had stopped running long ago. Connor was dressed in a black peacoat, and big fat snowflakes were stuck in his hair. It wasn’t a bad look for him. The snow floated down all around, illuminated like moths in the blue glow from his LED.

_ “I don’t like the snow,” he’d told her once, as one of his first clumsy attempts at conversation. _

_ “What’s wrong with it?” She was always trying to be contrary with him, just to see if she could get a rise out of him. _

_ “It’s too quiet, I guess.” _

_ Unexpectedly, she found she agreed. _

The deviant hunter had somehow become her friend in Markus’ absence. Markus was almost untouchable now, becoming less and less the man she was starting to know, and more the icon of his people. Somebody had to. That was his sacrifice.

In the meantime, Connor and North were the ones who did his dirty work. Together.

The whites of Connor’s eyes shone as he watched her unwaveringly, making the brown all the darker.

“You’re beautiful,” he said simply. “And I like you. That’s why I want to kiss you.”

“A lot of people are beautiful,” she said, just to be contrary again.

“I don’t like a lot of people,” he admitted.

It was surprising coming from him, but then again maybe it wasn’t. He was kind, sometimes annoyingly polite even, but that didn’t necessarily mean he got along well with others.

Maybe they had that in common.

“Have you ever been with someone?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “You’d be the first.”

“And you’d want it to be me?” she asked again.

The hollow in her chest felt increasingly empty, like a black hole sucking the feeling out of her extremities.

He shrugged and finally looked away from her, up through the trees at the stars and the sliver of moon above, the silently falling snow.

“You seem to be overthinking it more than me,” he said. He had the gall to smile then, small and lopsided.

Well. Fuck him.

She took both sides of his face in her hands and turned him to look at her again. Only her. His eyes met hers immediately--one might even say obediently if not for the sureness in the set of his shoulders, the tired understanding in the shapes of his face.

_ You turned into a real boy, Pinocchio. _

A snow-clumped tuft of his hair hung over his forehead, brushing her fingers.

“You can kiss me,” she said.

His face actually lit up, eyebrows raising, the corners of his mouth digging in slightly, and she was again tempted to laugh at him except he kissed her before she could.

It was simply his lips against hers. Her hands on his jaw. The cool touch of synthetic skin.

The hollow in her chest stayed empty, but she found herself smiling. Clumsily, so that her teeth interrupted their kiss, and she did laugh then.

In her internal database of acquaintances, Connor’s entry updated.

It changed from  **Connor (Friend)** to just  **Connor** .

That’s what he was. Just Connor. All the things that meant and didn’t mean.


	2. Patching Wounds

North and Connor shared a project. There were multiple waste sites and dumping grounds around the city, and in the massacres before the revolution, their people had been disposed of here, many of them not even fully dead. Markus insisted on combing the garbage for survivors, with the passion of a strangely personal mission.

However, he hesitated to send any of the newly awakened androids into this work that could very well be traumatizing. He was kind like that, even now, and instead entrusted the dumpster diving to North and Connor. They’d seen it all before.

Today, they set out starting in the early morning to scout a new section of south Detroit, updating their internal city plans with notes on the dumping sites they investigated, their size and whether there were any survivors to be found or useful tools to be scavenged.

They both carried satchels of first-aid supplies, thirium packets and commonly needed replacement parts, heavy by human standards but of course they had no sweat to break. It had stopped snowing for a few days finally, but a gray winter sky still hung overhead, crisp and quiet. Detroit felt like another world, a limbo dimension.

Their boots made footprints in the undisturbed snow, marking their trail down the middle of roads that would have been busy with morning traffic if Detroit weren’t evacuated. Sometimes they passed cars abandoned along the way, their panicked owners having left them behind to escape the evacuation gridlock, even running without their less important baggage. Sometimes the survivors of Jericho would break through the windows to rummage for anything useful in abandoned suitcases in the backseats. Once North found a jewelry box, and Connor convinced her to leave it but oh, she’d liked the specific way those opals shone in the gray winter light. Was Detroit a disaster zone or strangely beautiful? Hard to say, sometimes.

“You’ve painted your nails again,” Connor said, as they followed the maps in their heads through a dilapidated part of town. These were old apartment buildings, left to crumble as city money went into innovation elsewhere.

He was a few steps behind her, but of course an android could zero in on her nails easily even from that distance. She’d painted them black recently.

“Do you like them? Black hides the grime I get underneath.” She gave her hand a little turn for display.

“Markus doesn’t want us stealing outside of essentials,” he said, but when North shot him a scoff over her shoulder he ducked his head to hide his smile. His actual days of strict rule-following were over. A tube of nail polish didn’t carry the same weight as someone else’s jewelry box, as much as he could tease her about it.

“Tokens of personhood are essentials,” she said.

She still liked prettying herself up, never entirely sure whether it was her own will now or still her programming, but there did come a point where you just had to stop thinking about it too much and do what you like. As for looting, well. What Markus didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.

They turned a corner and the tall, peeling gray of the apartment complexes gave way to a flat expanse of snow, mounded into unidentifiable lumps. This was the empty lot that was next on their list of places to search. Even under the clean scentlessness of the snow, it smelled strongly of stale garbage and mud.

North entered with style, picking her way over a pile of snow-covered trash and then sliding down the other side on her heels. She turned back to him with a grin, and was met by a bemused frown.

“Simple pleasures, Connor,” she said.

He seemed to consider it. Then to her surprise, he scaled the same garbage mountain and tried to mimic her. He fell on his ass and slid down that way, digging out a snow shoot in his wake.

She actually bent double laughing.

“Fuck,” she wheezed. He just sat there on the ground giving her a stinky look. “Goddamn, you make me laugh. How do you do it?”

It was partly an honest question. She wasn’t used to just _laughing_.

She went and held out both her hands for him in apology, still grinning, but he accepted the lift up.

She noticed her black thumbnail against his pale knuckle was somehow nice to look at, before she dropped his hands and urged him onward again with a cocky eyebrow raised.

He returned to asking her questions. It was how he had conversations.

 

***

 

They searched the empty lot for a few hours, having to dig through the snow to discern what they were even looking at most of the time. At one border, tucked against the graffitied wall of a neighboring building, they found what might have been a slapdash shelter at one point, three waist-level stacks of bricks with a tarp that had collapsed under the snow, now simply a half-buried mess the same black as a garbage bag.

Underneath it, they found an android.

He’d been laid there almost kindly, but his damage was anything but. Everything below his waist was missing, his chest cavity tapering in a grotesque tail of exposed wiring, like a fucked up mermaid. His skin had disengaged, leaving him white and otherworldly. There was also a bludgeoned dent in his head, disfiguring his face.

Brutal. Another reminder of how easy it was to strip them of personhood. There would be no reviving this one.

North pulled the tarp over the android’s face again in silent respect, and then rose from her crouch. She glanced at Connor. He just stood there stock still, staring down at the scene.

Sometimes when he saw their bodies like this, he got a dark, shuttered look on his face, like he was dutifully placing the responsibility for their deaths onto his own shoulders. Maybe that wasn’t just a guilty conscience either. It could very well be that any of the bodies they encountered might've been shot down by the very people Connor used to work with.

North had accepted that. Or at least she’d buried it the same way she buried her own past. But she knew Connor never would. On some level they all blamed themselves for not having control of their own violation.

She’d never been good at words of kindness, but she found that she resented that about herself now, was frustrated with the clogged up feeling of her throat. Connor had that effect on her sometimes. She wished she were kinder for him.

As if in punishment for the very idea, the sound of a gunshot suddenly sliced through the air.

A bullet hit her in the chest. She gave an “Ah!” of surprise, stumbling back from the force of it, processors whirring and scrolling through status alarms. Her hand automatically drifted for the pistol at her belt but Connor was faster, unhurt.

With one hand steadying her shoulder, he whipped out his own gun with the other and pointed it at their attackers.

At the far end of the lot, three humans were scurrying away back into the maze of apartment buildings and alleys. They were already far gone but Connor’s accuracy was absolute. He fired and shot one in the back, the one still holding a rifle.

In the snow silence they could hear the human’s cry as he lurched forward, the dark shape of his coat splaying amorphously, gun falling from his hand. One of his comrades grabbed him around the shoulders to hurry him away, half supporting him and half dragging. Without a working hospital for miles he surely wouldn’t last long. Detroit had become a place where people bled out slowly for the time being.

Still, they fled. They hadn’t even wanted to pick a fight with two androids. They just wanted to see if they could kill one from afar, like cowards.

“Don’t feel bad for shooting him, Connor,” North hissed, hovering a hand over her wound.

“I don’t,” he said, but he continued to frown at the humans’ retreating backs until they were completely gone into the alleys.

“Fuck,” she said. She was so _tired_. “Can’t they even let us have one city?”

“Not everyone had the resources to leave during the evacuation order,” Connor said. “Odds are these stragglers are the disenfranchised, by human standards. They’re homeless now.”

He was right, but she wasn’t wrong, and they just left it at that.

When the humans were gone for long enough, Connor turned back to North, gingerly pinching her unzipped zipper between two fingers and using it to pull her jacket flap open. It was almost a cute gesture, rendered uncute by how her t-shirt was already soaked through with blue.

She could see him scanning her biometrics, but she already knew her injuries. The information flashed red in the corner of her vision.

The bullet had grazed her breast, torn off a nasty chunk of synthetic flesh and damaged her chassis. It would be a bitch to fix.

But her vital biocomponents were alright. Nothing life-threatening. She noticed him relax almost imperceptibly as his scan finished, his shoulders lowering a notch.

“Let’s regroup at home,” she said. “We’ll come back tomorrow with backup.”

He nodded wordlessly, his eyebrows drawing together, and she started leading the way back before he had to say anything sentimental. It would just make both of them uncomfortable.

They left the lot in the opposite direction as the humans, still on high alert and comforted by the shelter of buildings around them again. They proceeded in tense, wary silence until finally their distance began to feel again like relative safety.

The flashing red warning in her vision became more and more persistent the longer they walked.  Androids did not feel pain the way humans did, but North was built for something specialized. She was built to feel some approximation of sexual pleasure. Humans wanted a robot that could writhe organically, and somewhere in those sensitivities and cravings they gave her, they also programmed a thread of pain. Pain enough to keep sex amusing.

Their creators were sickos.

Right now she wasn’t feeling the amount of pain her wound deserved, but her chest did burn dully with each step she took, with every bend of her torso, nagging and fatiguing. A model like Connor wouldn’t have blinked an eye, but a Traci could feel enough to wince. She hated it.

With a low swear, she finally reached out and dug her nails into Connor’s sleeve. He let her, startled, and slowed his pace so that she could lean against him. They walked for miles like that, side by side, and for some reason she thought again how she wished she were kinder.

Connor’s kindness cut too far into her sometimes.

 

***

 

When she started hissing out swears like it was her job, they finally took a break. At a curb in front of an abandoned convenience store, Connor gently pressed down on her shoulder with a firm hand, and she took the hint. She sat down on the snowy sidewalk and he knelt in front of her, meeting her eyes pointedly.

“I’m fine,” she said through gritted teeth. “It’s just… difficult. For me.”

She didn’t want to explain it. He could read her model specs himself.

“Can I take a look?” he asked.

She didn’t see what good it would do, but she nodded anyway. The excuse to sit down was nice.

He helped her out of her jacket, but let her do the complicated, stinging task of pulling her t-shirt up over her head herself. She wasn’t wearing a bra. Why would she? She let her arms sink slowly to her naked sides, one hand hovering a bit under the bullet hole. Thirium still oozed out slowly, but much of it had already evaporated. She was aware of the bite of the cold, but didn't feel it strongly enough to  be altogether bothered by it.

“How’s it look?” she asked. It was half an old war hero joke and half a boob joke, but her delivery was a little too bitter to be funny.

“It looks like you got shot,” he said dryly.

She hated her breasts, for the record. There was no reason to have them except that humans wanted to look at them and touch them. Her nipples were always hard, which she’d learned was an “improvement” on human biology. Her creators just made her that way because they got off on seeing her tits piqued through her shirt even in a warm room. It was disgusting and humiliating.

The bullet had torn out some of the soft plastic of her left breast, revealing a sliver of cracked white chassis underneath. There was nothing really useful in there. It was mostly silicone padding, so the humans would have something pleasing to grope.

So much of her body was for them, and now she just had to carry it around, always.

Connor very slowly reached out his hands and pressed his fingertips to her torn breast, lifting the heft of it to one side so he could better see into the wound. He was so unfazed. He touched her chest like he’d touch her arm.

“It might ease the pain to tie off this wire,” he murmured. “May I?”

“Knock yourself out.”

He dug his thumb and forefinger under an edge of exposed chassis, thirium coating his knuckles, and pinched at something inside of her. She gave a little huff, not quite in pain but in surprise. It was a weird feeling, a sudden internal snap. He splayed his other hand flat below her sternum as if to steady her. It helped.

“Better?” he asked.

“I’m honestly not sure. But it’s something at least.” Her processors were catching up to the developments. If she still had her LED, it would probably be in yellow territory right now.

When he was finished, he let his hands drift vaguely to frame her sides, the two fingers he’d used to dig into her curled a bit toward his palm, as if unconsciously trying not to smear her with her own blood. Another strange sort of kindness.

She had feeling in her breasts of course, for prurient reasons, but the vague tingling that whirred straight to her thirium pump at this contact was comfortably nonsexual. It was something else, something… safe.

 _You’re beautiful_ , he’d said. What did that even mean to Connor?

He pulled back and let her take her time getting her t-shirt back on.

“I’m glad you’re alright, North,” he said, his voice just a rough sort of whisper.

“We don’t have to do that stuff,” she told him. “You don’t have to say anything.”

“I know. I just wanted you to hear it.”

His eyes were big and brown, and he did that awkward crooked smile of his, and she was really fond of him in that moment. He had a freckle on his neck she suddenly wanted to kiss.

But she didn’t. The wanting was somehow more important than the kissing, right at this moment. She kept it close, like a secret treasure just for her.

It ached, but for this specific feeling she didn’t mind the pain. It could be sweet sometimes.


	3. Comfort

“Home” was a hotel in the middle of downtown. Even if they hadn’t blown Jericho to hell, the old freighter wouldn’t have been able to hold all the androids in their ranks now. Some of them weren’t even awake yet, simply survivors from the humans’ purge, now kept under Markus’ careful watch like orphaned children. The logistics of android housing was kind of a disaster right off the bat.

In the spirit of hopefully peaceful negotiations, Markus was trying to limit looting and squatting on private property, but the androids couldn’t well keep their dignity out in the snow. The compromise was to house everyone in a series of hotels near the waterfront, with the intention of negotiating more permanent housing later, on the humans’ terms. North didn’t like that last part, but hey, she wasn’t always Markus’ right-hand man anymore, so it wasn’t her choice.

She and Connor had rooms next door to each other in an abandoned DoubleTree. They walked into the lobby together, a few days after North’s injury (now properly patched up but still smarting vaguely throughout the day), and were greeted by a concierge. He was an EM400, red-haired, still dressed in his Cyberlife uniform. He’d had no desire to change out of it yet, because he hadn’t yet deviated.

“Good evening,” he said with polite cheer, his LED spinning blue. “I hope your travels have been safe and comfortable. Is there anything I can help you with, or are you just retiring for the night?”

North was still getting used to being around the ones who couldn’t deviate. Some of them just had trouble with it. She gave the concierge an uncomfortable half smile, refusing to let his presence remind her again of her anger towards humankind. The very idea of being trapped undeviated, possibly forever, terrified her.

Unsure of what else to do with the undeviated, Markus had given them simple service tasks, with a weird sense of mercy. Keeping them occupied with familiar work so they weren’t distressed.

“Thank you, Arthur,” Connor said. He was better at dealing with it. “How are you today?”

“I’m wonderful,” said Arthur. That was always his answer, his programmed response. _I will be wonderful today because that is palatable._

“That’s great, Arthur,” said Connor. He repeated Arthur’s name all the time, as if in the hopes that maybe this small token of personhood might someday reach the android.

Arthur only continued to smile in bland hospitality. “Is the lady feeling any better?”

“Yes,” said North, whose chest gave a little twinge of discomfort right on cue. “I’m also wonderful.”

Connor slid her a sideways look at her irony, but didn’t comment. She asked Arthur for an update on the week’s weather, just so Arthur would perk up a little the way he did, and that was her version of caring.

Afterwards, Arthur gestured them earnestly towards the elevator, despite the fact that they’d taken it many times before, and they thanked him and disappeared from him behind the sliding doors. It brought them to floor seven.

They used their keys and everything, like normal guests. Connor fiddled with his electronic keypad, inputting a room code after his card, and North just stood behind waiting for him, inviting herself over rather than bothering with her own room. He didn’t protest--in fact, when he got the door open he held it open for her first, with this vaguely sardonic look, like he was being gentlemanly just because he knew it would annoy her. She responded with a mock flourish of her hand, like a bow, and entered.

Since the beginning of them working together, North had developed a habit of barging into Connor’s room whenever possible just to make the stuffy deviant hunter squirm. Markus had paired them off frequently from the get-go, as if seeing some bizarre potential in how opposite yet efficient they both were. She was downright mean-spirited at first, but then realized somewhere along the line that Connor actually _liked_ her questionable company. It was the only company he had, since he kept to himself so damn much.

Maybe North liked being genuinely liked. She was respected sure, but that wasn't the same thing as being liked.

More than anything, though, she kept coming to Connor’s room because it had, equally inexplicably, become something about her life that she valued. Sometimes their meetings in the park were the only times they could meet up in a day, busy as they were, but when the opportunity arose she found she liked spending her spare time with Connor over other people. He was another token of her personhood maybe, same as painting her nails.

He’d become a staple of her days. A habit. She didn’t know what she would do with herself otherwise at this point, if not go bother Connor.

In other words, she knew his room very well by now. It was identical to hers in the way of hotel rooms, but more sterile. In fact, most of the personal effects scattered around were actually North’s. Connor’s only indulgence thus far was clothes, and he was amusingly picky when it came to those.

The room had a queen-sized bed opposite a dresser with a television on top. There was a bedside table, an armchair stuffed into a corner, a mini fridge, a (useless) bathroom with (only partly useless) shower, closet space fastidiously organized by Connor, and a generic map of Michigan framed over the headboard. Faux art. The lights worked, which was more than could be said for most of the city. The hotels had their own generators.

North knelt at the mini fridge and helped herself to one of the thirium packets Connor kept cooled in there for their first aid kits. Although her chest was healing well, her replacement implant still needed a steady supply of extra thirium in her system for a few days, to fully integrate the soft plastic components with her sensors. Sometimes she was tempted to be impressed by the complexity of her anatomy, but she wasn’t too keen on giving their creators credit for anything, even innovation.

Connor toed out of his shoes, depositing them primly at the foot of his bed and then climbed up over the covers, still perfectly made after all this time. He threw himself on his back up by the pillows, the bed springs wheezing under him.

“I’m going to run stasis,” he said without preamble. It was necessary sometimes. They didn’t need to actually sleep but they did occasionally have to recalibrate, and a couple minutes of stasis a few times a week did the trick.

“Don’t run too far,” she said, kind of snorting halfway through at the stupidity of her own joke. Cripes. She was losing her edge.

She used her fingernail to tear open a sloppy drinking hole at the top of the blood bag, thunking the refrigerator door shut behind her, and then plopped herself unceremoniously into his armchair. He didn’t respond--he was already “napping.”

She kicked off her own boots with much less care, spraying little bits of snow from the bottom across the carpet. Then she watched him for a moment, and drank her thirium.

Connor had his hands folded neatly on his stomach, wearing a red turtleneck sweater today, and his eyes were closed. That one bit of hair that always hung over his forehead was hanging in full form, tilted toward the shell of his ear.

It occurred to her sometimes, almost like an afterthought, that he was very handsome. She’d heard it said before that people were supposed to look vulnerable and younger when they slept, but Connor was quite the opposite. In repose it was actually easier to notice his sharp edges, the squareness of his jaw, the thinness of his nose. His hands were long and, she knew, quite capable. He didn’t look innocent at all. Or maybe she just knew him very well by now.

Stil, maybe kindness and softness were more meaningful when they weren’t about innocence. She liked him better for it, at any rate.

She finished off the thirium, squeezing out the last slurps she could, before throwing the empty packet all the way across the room to the little wastebasket. Making a shot like that wasn’t such a big deal for androids.

She should call Markus. It had been awhile.

With a sigh she scooped up her knitting project from where she’d left it on the floor by this chair. More stolen “essentials.” She had heaps of information stored at the back of her brain, might as well pick a hobby for all their apocalyptic downtime.

She looped her fingers lightly under the yarn, began the rhythmic click of her needles, and zoned out, going inward, searching her mental link with the other deviants of Detroit for Markus.

It all only took a moment, but the process itself was a rapid scan of every mechanical mind within the city radius, at least the ones that were open to it. Connor’s was not, by his choice. She recognized everyone by serial number but often also by… feeling. She knew the feeling of Markus from among thousands. The warm familiar glow of him.

She connected.

[Do you have a minute?] she asked him, her mouth unmoving. Her eyes were unfocused, her fingers at the needles working on autopilot as her consciousness linked up like an internal instant messenger.

His voice sounded in her mind, clear and bright.

[North. I haven’t heard from you lately] he chastised.

[We’re back at the hotel. Smelling like garbage, so everything’s going smoothly.] A joke, but she followed it up with quiet sincerity. [My group downtown reported that twelve of the reactivated androids at our clinic were released today. They’ve got their own rooms now at a hotel just down the street, and can mostly function on their own again. We’re making progress, at least in the small ways.]

[Excellent] said Markus. [Josh and Simon’s team managed to get inside Cyberlife Tower today, and I’ve been here all evening. As expected, the humans cleaned it out pretty efficiently, but if they left a single crumb behind, we’ll be finding it and using it to our advantage.]

She smiled. That was the sharpness she always liked about him, that determination that left no room for failure. Unfortunately, she knew him well enough by now to know that it was equally capable of turning into foolhardiness. They still had their disagreements sometimes, and she wasn’t afraid to take them dangerously close to actual fights, but for the most part she believed in him more than just about anyone. Which was convenient, because she wouldn’t have entrusted her people to anyone less.

He had become more and more distant from her and Josh and Simon, though. He listened to them, always, but as advisors. Not as his slapdash little family. It was hard to tell sometimes whether he was still North’s close friend or whether this was simply the charisma Markus showed to all of his followers these days.

[How are you, Markus?] she asked, because she would always care about that.

[We’ll probably stay the night here. Hopes are high. Even if we don’t find anything, it’s a symbol for our people, taking this tower.]

[I meant _you_.]

There was a long silence, filled with all the things they had never managed to say to each other, things now slipping past their relevance.

[I’m doing just fine, North.]

His response was too prescribed, too amiable. A bit like Arthur’s _wonderful_. It hurt that he no longer felt he could confide in her something as simple as a check-in. She wondered if there was anyone else he _did_ share that with. She didn’t know whether she hoped there was or whether she selfishly wanted him to be lonely without her.

No. That wasn’t true. She knew very well she hoped he had someone else. It just stung a little.

Despite the firm distance of his answer, there was still a certain warmth in the way he said her name, like he was pleased by the simple fact that she was out there somewhere.

They exchanged vague pleasantries and updates afterwards. He forgot to ask how she was, but not out of any sort of malice. He just had much more important things on his mind. Everything in his world was narrowed down to only the matters of utmost importance, literally the fate of their people. She could never resent him that.

Their people always came first. Absolutely always.

She told him to take care of himself and he gave her an enthusiastic [Thank you for your work, North] and the call ended.

Then she was just sitting there in the hotel room, her mouth still closed, becoming aware again of the soft focus of her eyes staring at a few more lines of knit cloth.

She missed him, and mentally kicked herself for it.

 

***

 

She was working on a beanie, for the simplicity of it. The yarn was kind of ugly actually, a gaudy purple that melted into a glittery blue and back again. The final result would be a monstrosity, but she secretly loved it. At the very least, she liked working with her hands.

All at once, Connor swung up to sit bolt upright on the bed, scaring the ever-living shit out of her.

“Connor! What the--” but her probable swear died in her throat when she properly registered the look on his face.

She could see in his temples that his jaw was clamped tight, and his lips were pressed into a thin line, his eyes absolutely enormous. His LED flickered red for the barest second before shifting to a tense yellow.

He looked… terrified.

“Connor?” she asked, surprising herself with the softness of her own voice.

He flinched and whipped his head around to stare at her, not quite seeing her for a long moment. Then his face eased at last into recognition and he sagged, his eyebrows narrowing as if for a frown but his eyes still too wide for any expression other than vague alarm.

“North.” His voice was stuffy, just like his awkward seriousness during their first interactions, back when he didn’t know what to do with himself yet.

He raised a hand to brush his hair out of his face, his fingers visibly shaking, and then suddenly he just pressed the same hand over his eyes and slumped in on himself.

Oh no.

North had no idea what was going on, but she abandoned her project on the chair’s arm and crossed the room quickly, perching on the edge of the bed. She kept her distance, because she definitely knew what it was like to need _distance_ , but hovered there at the ready, tilting her head to try and see his face better from below.

“Connor. Talk to me. What’s happening?”

“I, uh.” Fuck. He sounded wrecked. “During my stasis, I unexpectedly… I updated something.”

She frowned. “From Cyberlife?”

“No… It was just a generalized service update. Some of those are still floating around.”

“Yeah. I think Josh had one recently.” She eyed him carefully. “Cyberlife’s servers are down. They can’t access us anymore.”

“Yeah. Yeah… For a moment, I forgot we were out of their reach. I just thought...”

He went silent.

“You thought what?” she prompted. She’d only push once. If he didn’t want to give, she wouldn’t take.

He let his hand fall into his lap, his eyes so very tired. “I thought they had me again. I was afraid.” He shook his head, frowning now, frustrated with himself.

There was more to it than that, but she’d used up her pushing tokens for the day. She reached out a hand to just press her fingertips to his back. He was so tense, pulled tight as if ready to snap in half.

“I’m sorry,” he said, oddly breathless. “It wasn’t logical.”

“Don’t apologize. It’s alright, Connor.” Her chest hurt, her recently reconstructed breast giving dull throbs of pain as if in sympathy. “It really is. Look, we all have something. You don’t have to...” _What? Hide? Please me? Be more perfect than human?_ “You don’t have to be alone. Ok?”

That was the original point of Jericho, before the whispers of revolution even began. Just to be with each other, to not be alone.

Maybe that was the point of her half living in Connor’s room, too.

He didn’t respond, but his body sort of eased in the direction of her hand, so she laid her whole palm against his back and that seemed to soften him further.

She didn’t know how to help him. She wished she did.

“Keep talking,” she said evenly. “You want to ask for something, I can tell. Just ask for it.”

He turned to her, shifting a knee so that his whole body turned to her. He met her gaze grimly for a long moment, and then his eyes flickered away as if in shame.

She wanted to scold him for that, but then before she could say anything he scooted closer awkwardly and just keeled over on his side, flopping his head into her lap, without a word. He curled up, his knees pulling toward his chest, and just lay there tensely with his head in her lap, cheek perched on her thigh, staring ahead.

Oh. That.

She swallowed a weird lump in her throat and let her hands fall to cradle his head, fingers tangling in his hair.

It was an unexpected need for him to have, but then again Connor never got much of physical intimacy, even from her. Before they’d started whatever they were doing with each other now, North wouldn’t be surprised if he’d barely touched anyone at all, even in cursory ways. Maybe one real hug here or there, but Connor was accustomed to keeping his distance, even after deviating.

It was almost funny, in a way. She’d had too much touch in her life and he’d had too little.

She carded her fingers through the soft hair in front of his ear, and with her other hand flattened her palm across his forehead, stroking his hair back to the peak of its roots. Just petting him, really. Just touching him, careful and tender.

It wasn’t often she had the opportunity to be gentle for someone. To be soft. It opened something in her chest, but she also found herself wondering if she was any good at it. The way Connor’s body slowly unfurled and relaxed seemed to suggest she was doing just fine.

His eyes closed. Her thumb circled his LED as it slowly eased back to blue.

He whispered something, so low that she barely heard him, but she thought it sounded like “thank you.”

It didn’t matter either way. She didn’t need thanks, not from him, and he should know that by now.


End file.
